My Experiments with Truth: A Review

About the Author

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was an Indian lawyer and freedom fighter. He was born into a Vaishnava family in coastal Gujarat and studied law at the Inner Temple in London. He moved to South Africa in 1895 to represent an Indian merchant in a lawsuit. It was there that he started a family, and he stayed in the country for 20 years. He employed nonviolent resistance to lead the Indian Independence Movement. He led the Quit India Movement and the Non-Cooperation Movement. Gandhi was against the idea of a separate state for Muslims, and he worked to quell the religious violence that took place during the partition. He was assassinated on January 30, 1948, by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu nationalist from Pune. His birthday, October 2, is observed as Gandhi Jayanti in India and as the International Day of Nonviolence worldwide.

It is important to note that Gandhi did not compile the book in the form we read it today by himself. His secretary Mahadev Desai and others organized the raw material — Gandhi’s writings in his papers, journals, and personal accounts — into a book format. The work was originally published in Gujarati and was translated into English later. It is said that some 50,000 copies of the Gujarati version were sold back then.

About the Book

The book was published in 1925 when Gandhi was still in jail. He did not intend it to be a traditional autobiography; he only wanted to speak about his “experiments with truth”. Since his life consisted of nothing but those experiments, the book takes the form of an autobiography. The title refers to Gandhi’s efforts to become one with God. He believed God was Truth, and throughout the book we see him getting closer to God as time passes. This autobiography also talks about the events of the Indian Independence Movement until 1921. The book was written before Gandhi became famous around the world.

Gandhi explains that he wrote this book because he believed that a collected account of his experiments with truth would be of benefit to the reader. In fact, the book — with its simplicity, transparency, and brutal honesty — invites readers to experiment with truth in their own way. This 550-page courageous narrative is a must-read for all, irrespective of who they are and what their intentions are. It speaks to all.

My Impressions

My mother asked if I would like to read Mahatma Gandhi’s autobiography My Experiments with Truth during the pandemic. As an ardent reader, I readily agreed, as I had chewed through all the fiction and nonfiction books in our home library during the lockdown. Initially I was excited to see that it had about 500 pages to keep me occupied for at least a week. However, I felt the book was quite dry, devoid of much drama, excitement, and emotion that would keep young readers like me gripped. I think I finished the book in parts in about three days, as I kept looking for more interesting things to unfold. A few things like Gandhi’s vows to be vegetarian and his self-restraint kept coming back to me. I suspect I had this after-effect because I had always thought a vegetarian diet was torture, and I had a hard time staying off screens beyond my approved time.

I started reading the book again in many parts several times. I didn’t know what drew me to it at that time. But in retrospect, I think the honesty and transparency of the narrator drew me to it over and over. It was as if you could know a great man from up close without any inhibition. What stood out to me was the stubbornness of Gandhi. I still wonder how he could fast for days and follow weekly fasts and days of silence, while it was so hard for me to even skip a meal, eat a little less, or speak or watch less.

A big eye-opener for me as I read this book was that Gandhi’s life was indeed his quest for the Truth, which to him was God. He didn’t have fixed goals and objectives as such; whatever he did was part of this pursuit. Before reading the book, I thought an independent India was his dream, a set goal he had dedicated his life to. It is only after one reads the book that one understands how every fight, sacrifice, and accomplishment in his life was part of his lifelong quest to seek the Truth.

The book also provides insight into how Gandhi formulated his own nonviolent method of protest called satyagraha. It shows how much inner strength Gandhi had, and how wise he was, as he knew that violent rebellion against the British would likely fail.

At times, I felt disconnected from the book. It felt too idealistic and distant to younger generations. At other times, reading the book felt like talking to a good friend. Gandhi’s relentless quest was so deep yet simple. The fact that I could understand and connect with the principles of ahimsa and the oneness of all religions at the age of 12 makes this book, much like Gandhi, “amar” — something that lives on forever, connecting with one and all universally.

When I read the book again recently to complete my history project, it took much longer. I struggled to retain the information from this 500-plus-page conversational narrative. I realized that the book stays with you in spirit. Reading it was very experiential; it was incredibly hard to summarize and review, as every chapter, every page, every word seemed integral to the core of the book. As its title suggests, it is hard to write a narrative about an experiment; one can only experience it with the writer. Gandhi speaks to the reader as an innocent child, a good friend, a spirited youth, a wise man, a deeply spiritual leader, and a great philosopher through this book.

Literary Review

“But it is not my purpose to attempt a real autobiography. I simply want to tell the story of my numerous experiments with truth, and as my life consists of nothing but those experiments, it is true that the story will take the shape of an autobiography. But I shall not mind, if every page of it speaks only of my experiments. I believe, or at any rate flatter myself with the belief, that a connected account of all these experiments will not be without benefit to the reader. The more I reflect and look back on the past, the more vividly do I feel my limitations.”

The above lines are taken from the introduction of the book, where Gandhi clearly states his intentions in writing — and spells out what it is and what it is not. It is not a typical autobiography where writers narrate their life experiences mainly through the lens of material success, failure, and external milestones. Gandhi did not target the work to a particular class of readers; instead, it was written as a companion and guide for any seeker of truth, from any time. Gandhi paid little attention to language rules and guidelines of storytelling; he simply wrote the words that his heart spoke, from a place of honesty and inner freedom.

This is exactly what the reader senses when one looks at the book from a literary point of view. The vocabulary, the sentence structure, the organization of content, and its voice are quite simple and elegant, without explicitly striving for literary flourish. In my opinion, the book had a few flaws, such as a sometimes monotonous narrative, slow pacing, and occasional digressions into incidents that did not significantly impact the main story. The grammar was not perfect, but that was understandable given how large the text was. Overall, it was a good read and definitely worth it. The book was well translated by Gandhi’s secretary Mahadev Desai.

Historical Review

It is beyond doubt that world history remains incomplete without knowing Gandhi. As we all agree that personal, social, political, religious, and spiritual ideologies are an integral part of studying history, it is my opinion that this book has great historical significance. Through this book we understand the social and cultural values and beliefs of the Indian diaspora and how they evolved from pre-independence to post-independence as India became the world’s largest democracy.

We understand the chronology of Gandhi’s activism, his successes, his failures, and his learnings in fighting for the rights of Indians in South Africa. From the book we get to know the inception and the power of satyagraha and the lasting importance of ahimsa. It is a rich historical text that is ripe with chronological accounts of events and shows how Gandhian philosophy brought together millions of people to achieve the dream of democracy and freedom for India.

Part I

Part I of Gandhi’s autobiography talks about his childhood and early adulthood. The book begins with an account of his family background, the cultural values, beliefs, and personalities in his home, and the lasting influence of his parents. The chronological account of his exposure to books, plays, religion, cultural differences, values and beliefs, and social practices such as child marriage and untouchability reveals Gandhi to the reader as a devout son, an introspective person, and an authentic human being. Most importantly, the reader sees early signs of Gandhi’s innate and persistent quest to seek the Truth.

Gandhi narrates his experiences, thoughts, and ideas with such simplicity that ordinary readers like me connect and relate to him instantly. It is only through his questions, doubts, and deep introspection that we realize we are reading the story of the Mahatma.

Notable incidents from Part I include his marriage, his experiments with meat eating and his eventual embrace of vegetarianism, and his experiences in England. Gandhi got married to Kasturbai at the young age of 13 due to his family circumstances. At the time, Gandhi did not fully understand what marriage meant, and he found some of the wedding rituals amusing. When he was older, he realized that he had not been ready for marriage and came to believe that child marriage was wrong. He shares his struggles with lust and his regrets about not being able to tend fully to his father in his final moments.

Another notable incident from his childhood was when his classmate and his brother convinced him to try meat, under the pretext that the secret of the Englishman’s strength was meat. At the time, Gandhi was a vegetarian bound by his respect for his mother, but he thought meat was beneficial to the body and that it would help Indians rebel against the British. Gandhi sailed to England when he was eighteen years old to write the bar exam at the Inner Temple. It was here that he became a true vegetarian and even helped lead a vegetarian movement.

To summarize, this part of the book shows how Gandhi formed his value system under the influence of his Vaishnava parents. It was revealing to know that he was experimenting with truth even as a child. I felt that Gandhi narrated his childhood with striking honesty and simplicity. Even though he was very responsible and did many things “right”, he always strived to be better, as he had high standards for himself even in his formative years.

Part II

The second part of the book narrates Gandhi’s struggles to settle into a barrister’s career and his early experiences in the Cape Colony (modern-day South Africa). Much like Part I, we see how Gandhi’s failures, mistakes, interactions with different people and books, and exposure to different situations shaped his habits (for example, walking to work), principles (such as never taking advantage of a friendship), and attitudes, and how they deepened his wisdom and strengthened his resolve to seek the Truth.

Gandhi passed the bar exam in England at age twenty-two and returned to India to start his law practice. He did not find any clients for two years after he passed the bar exam. Eventually, he received an offer from an Indian merchant in South Africa. Gandhi had only intended to stay in South Africa for a year or two, but he ended up staying in the country for twenty years as an attorney fighting for the rights of Indians in South Africa.

It was during this time that Gandhi began to develop his personal philosophy of satyagraha. He read texts from other religions, and he developed his belief in the oneness of God and religious plurality. Gandhi also learned more deeply about the Hindu concept of ahimsa and based much of his personal philosophy around it. He was also influenced by Leo Tolstoy’s work, which preached that the best life was a life close to nature. Raychandbhai, Tolstoy, and Ruskin were three moderns who had a deep impression and influence on Gandhi.

One day, Gandhi was sitting in a first-class seat in a train. A white passenger ordered him to give up his seat. He refused, and he was thrown into the third-class compartment. Gandhi realized that the hardship he was subjected to was superficial — only a symptom of the deeper disease of color prejudice. He decided to try to root out that disease and to suffer hardships in the process. After his work as a lawyer was done, Gandhi spent his time in South Africa fighting against the Indian Franchise Bill, which would strip Indians of their right to vote.

In the subsequent chapters, the reader gets to know about the intimate and deep study Gandhi conducted to understand the harsh conditions of Indian settlers in South Africa. His interactions and relationships with people of different religions, his study of religious scriptures, and his relentless efforts to garner support for the cause guided him toward success in bringing justice.

This part of Gandhi’s autobiography shows how his activist spirit began to develop in his early twenties. He also made advances in his personal philosophy and accepted the principles of religious plurality and mutual respect, which would prove useful later. Those beliefs gave Gandhi the ability to unite Indians against the British.

Part III

This part of Gandhi’s autobiography continues to talk about his life in South Africa and how he fought for the rights of Indians. In 1896, Gandhi returned to India to visit Madras. Many laborers working in the Cape Colony had relatives in that area, and Gandhi was surprised to find that he was quite popular among them. He sailed back to the Cape with his family in December 1896. A crowd of rioters awaited Gandhi at Port Natal, determined to prevent him from entering the country. The Police Superintendent came to escort him safely.

Gandhi also began to realize the value of service to others. In the Second Boer War, Gandhi led a medical corps that served the British army. He returned to India again to attend the 1901 Indian National Congress meeting. It was there that he met Gopal Krishna Gokhale, who became Gandhi’s political mentor and supporter. Through Gokhale, Gandhi gained access to political connections that would be useful when he later came back to India to lead the Indian Independence Movement.

It was during this time that Gandhi developed his method of protesting called satyagraha. In a satyagraha, protestors were prohibited from engaging in violence. They acted in defiance of authority through nonviolent means such as boycotts. The first satyagraha was conducted by Gandhi in defiance of the Transvaal government, which was making all Indian children over the age of eight South African citizens. Protestors burned their registration cards and crossed borders illegally. Many Indians, including Gandhi himself, were arrested.

During this period, Gandhi started his first ashram. It was named Tolstoy Farm after the writer who had inspired him. He later established another ashram named Satyagraha Ashram, which became a symbol of the Indians’ struggle against a repressive government.

After his release, Gandhi traveled to England. There, he convinced many members of the British government to support him. Still, the situation in South Africa did not improve much for Indians. The Cape Colony passed a law making all non-Christian marriages illegitimate, which meant that all Indian children in the colony became illegitimate. The government also increased the poll tax on Indians. Gandhi led a massive satyagraha against these laws. In one such protest, he and thousands of Indians crossed the Natal–Transvaal border illegally. The government relented due to the sheer number of protestors. They scrapped the marriage law and removed the poll tax. The protest was a massive success and showed the strength of satyagraha to India and the rest of the world. Gandhi had gained valuable experience in South Africa, and his work was admired by Indians across the world. This admiration would prove useful when he returned to India.

Part IV

This part begins with Gandhi suffering a setback in his attempt to gather support from the British politician Joseph Chamberlain for Indians in South Africa. Persistent efforts of Gandhi in this regard were met with insults and further hardships. Gandhi swallowed those insults with grace and advised his allies to do the same. He moved to Johannesburg to continue his professional work.

In the subsequent chapters, Gandhi talks about his regrets about signing up for life insurance and the deepening of his bond with the Bhagavad Gita as he endeavors to help his theosophist friends with it. We find Gandhi in a vulnerable place where he lends a loan to a vegetarian restaurant and has to accept the loss. Gandhi takes the lesson with grace.

A profound understanding of ahimsa as a fight against a system, not an individual, emerges when Gandhi regrets the sacking of corrupt officers who had demanded bribes from Indians and Chinese in return for service. They were dismissed as a result of the complaints and protests led by him. Gandhi begins to see that true nonviolence aims at transforming structures rather than merely punishing individuals.

In several chapters, Gandhi recollects Kasturba’s struggles with adhering to his simple and austere way of life. He confesses his wrongdoing and describes their unconditional love, which only strengthened after he gave up lust. He expresses wonder, contentment, and regret about their relationship with grace.

Gandhi writes about his English friends and his candid opinion on the difficulties of living with them. Interestingly, he refers to his employees as “co-workers”; he has immense respect for his secretaries Miss Dick and Miss Schlesin.

Gandhi and Kasturba both survive life-threatening diseases during this time. They both stick to their vegetarian/vegan diet in spite of the doctors’ insistence that they give in to fight their illnesses. These incidents are narrated with such modesty that the reader feels relieved to know that they survived despite their insistence on their principles.

The subsequent chapters talk about the plague episode, the Zulu rebellion, and Gandhi’s continued experiments with earth and water diets. Readers get to know about the birth of the word “satyagraha”, his early experiments with it, and his continued practice of restraint with diet. He gives up pulses and salt and insists that Kasturba join him in this “domestic satyagraha” as well.

We get to know Gandhi as a teacher who believed in experiential and inquiry-based learning. He talks about how he educated his own children and others at Tolstoy Farm. It was moving to know that Gandhi trembled when he had to use a cane to punish his son; that was his first and last time. He went on a week’s fast when his students did wrong. His methods of teaching and the way he conducted himself as a teacher were deeply touching.

We also understand in greater depth the bond between Gokhale and Gandhi. The part concludes with Gandhi returning to India after ten years and sharing more accounts from his law practice. It felt good to read the part where he describes being victorious as an honest lawyer.

Part V

The concluding part begins with references to a reception meeting in which Gandhi insisted that it would be better to speak in the local Gujarati language instead of English when addressing the people in Gujarat. In subsequent chapters, Gandhi meets several leaders and ponders the invitation to join the Servants of India Society, which he ultimately declines. When his mentor Gokhale passes away, he vows to travel across India for a year to better understand the cultural, social, economic, religious, and political landscape of the country. He recounts his amazement and learnings while visiting pilgrimage places like the Kumbh Mela and Haridwar.

We get to know about the indigo farmers’ struggle in Champaran and the victory of Gandhi’s satyagraha with the support of a fair-minded governor. The accounts of the mill workers’ strike and the weavers’ strike walk us through satyagraha in action and its widespread adoption across India. This was when Vallabhbhai Patel and Mahadev Desai joined Gandhi’s efforts and took satyagraha to the grassroots.

The recommendations of the Rowlatt Commission and the proposed Rowlatt Acts prompted Gandhi to take up nationwide satyagraha. He called for a day of strike and prayer in protest, which the entire nation successfully executed. However, as the satyagraha against the Rowlatt Act continued for days, violence erupted in several places. Gandhi fasted as a penance and decided that it was his duty to educate people about the true essence of satyagraha.

Gandhi realized that the British had lost the will and power to maintain their empire, and he thought that Indian independence was inevitable. He believed that for India to become worthy of independence, it had to be willing to fight social evils such as poverty, casteism, and child marriage. After his imprisonment ended, Gandhi resumed his quest for Truth and oneness with God.

Farewell

Gandhi concludes the autobiography at a point where he feels that his life has become public and that his association with the Congress and the experiments during that period will become part of the Congress’s history. He ends the narrative by admitting that his conclusions from his current experiments can hardly be regarded as decisive yet.

He parts painfully from the reader with an assurance that he has spared no pains to make it a faithful narrative and that the exercise has given him “ineffable mental peace”. The earnestness in his parting words touches the reader deeply.

At the end of his autobiography, he admits that he is still fighting with the “dormant passions” that lie within his psyche. He says that conquering the subtle passions of the mind is more difficult than the physical conquest of the world by arms. Gandhi feels motivated to keep trying to tame those passions. He believes that he has to put himself last among his fellow human beings, which he sees as the only way to achieve salvation.

“I ask him to join with me in prayer to the God of Truth that He may grant me the boon of ahimsa in mind, word, and deed.”

These lines come near the end of the work, where he asks the reader to join him in that prayer. I believe that concluding the book with a prayer for triple purity was the most meaningful way to end it.

Conclusion

Gandhi’s autobiography is extremely well written in its simplicity. Through it, we learn how Gandhi developed into a person worthy of the title “Father of India”. In many other autobiographies, the author tries to make himself look as good as possible, and may lie about or exaggerate certain details to accomplish this goal. Gandhi does not do that; in the book, he tries to be as objective as possible. This shows his humility and honesty. The book has been translated well and uses simple language to communicate Gandhi’s ideas about religion and philosophy to the reader. This conforms with Gandhi’s personal belief that the most important concepts about religion are the ones that can be fully understood by anyone, including children. We also hear stories of Gandhi’s past that might have been lost to history if they hadn’t been recorded in his autobiography.

One thing I noticed in the book was that Gandhi never changed his core ideology after he had formed it and that he followed it very rigidly. Many did not agree with his policy of pacifism even in the face of a violent enemy, for example. In my opinion, this willingness to fully commit to one ideology is what makes people like Mahatma Gandhi different from the common person. Great leaders in the past have always had a strong moral compass that helped them make decisions confidently. This stubbornness is what made them able to think outside the box and make unpopular decisions that resulted in lasting peace and the eventual rise of the world’s largest democracy. As Friedrich Nietzsche once said, “A man with a why can withstand almost any how.”

Most importantly, Gandhi lives on and continues to influence humanity. This book, My Experiments With Truth, is a powerful portal through which we can come to know Gandhi, understand his philosophy, and accept his invitation to experiment with truth ourselves.

This book will change many of the reader’s pre-existing opinions on Gandhi and the ideologies he believed in. Much of the knowledge that can be gained from this book is tacit and is gained through analysis of the stories inside it. I had a great time reading this book, and I did not expect to learn so much from it. The evolution of the Indian independence movement and the earlier struggle of Indians in South Africa are also shown in the text. It is a good read for people of all ages, and it remains relevant to this day.